Saturday, January 11, 2014

Aristides N. Hatzis on Greece

A fascinating look into what is going on in Greece over the past few months from a writer who is an associate professor of legal theory at the University of Athens and runs GreekCrisis.net. There are some remarkable similarities to The Bahamas.

Watch Greece – it may be the next Weimar Germany

Financial TimesNovember 7, 2013

Since the 2012 summer elections, Greece has rumbled with echoes of the Weimar Republic. There was no doubt that the composition of the Greek legislature was the worst in modern history. Parliament now contains the full spectrum of authoritarians: neo-Nazis, Stalinists and Maoists together with radical leftwingers, populist rightwingers and numerous defenders of paranoid conspiracy theories.

Nevertheless, for more than a year the situation looked superficially bearable. Greece has a strong coalition government trying to implement reforms, cut government spending and restore our economy. But to keener observers, failures outweigh the successes.

During its tumultuous history modern Greece has always managed to be part of the winning alliances. Right after its independence Greece was attached to the powerful British Empire. In the two world wars Greece was an energetic ally of the western powers. After a ferocious civil war it saved itself from becoming the southern part of the iron curtain and during the Cold War it was a member of NATO and an ally to the U.S. These alliances (despite their predicaments) helped Greece to realize two dreams: national integration and economic development (from 1929 to 1980 Greece had an average rate of growth of 5.2 percent).

That wealth is created, instead, through cooperation, exchange and transaction in a free, competitive market is an alien notion in a society where prospective students choose university departments based on their degree of access to government jobs.